ART
The Royal Academy IT is lucky that the Royal Academy has opened its exhibition so soon after that of the British Artists' Congress, for the few gaps left by the latter are now filled up and it is possible to get a complete picture of contemporary English art in two visits. The British Artists took us to nearly the best, and cer- tainly the Academy has not been afraid to show us the worst.
The method usually adopted by historians of painting is to analyse a historical situation and see what kind of art it is likely to have produced, but it is also possible to learn a good deal by reversing the process, and going round an exhibition and asking oneself : "What is the state of mind of people who like and perhaps buy this kind of painting ? " It is difficult to do this at all fully in an exhibition as large as the Academy, but it is possible to arrive at certain general conclusions based on the types of painting which stand out most prominently at Burlington House.
Let us begin with the portraits, to which this kind of analysis applies most easily. These, as usual, dominate the exhibition in quantity, and, if they are to be reduced to manageable scale, they must be divided into various classes. First come the official portraits, of statesmen, bishops, headmasters, soldiers and sailors. The most striking point in these is the prominence which is given to the insignia of office—the uniform of the officers, the purple of the bishops, the doctor's gown of the headmaster. It is on these and not on the per- sonality of the sitter that the artist has relied to give reality to his painting ; and that is not due to any fault on the part of the artist, but to the fact that many of these sitters only have a real existence in terms of their office. Take off the lawn sleeves or the uniform, and the dummy falls to the ground. It may be said that this is an inevitable quality of official por- traits, that it has always been so and that it is the fault neither of artist nor of sitter. But that is not the case. Rembrandt was able to make of his syndic portraits real human documents, not mere items for the history of costume. And this was not due only to his own personal genius, for many inferior artists, such as Philippe de Champaigne, could do the same. The credit goes, of course, largely to the painter, but some of it must also be allotted to the sitters. The fact that they were real men with real existences made the task possible. The fact that most of the sitters for this kind of portrait in the Academy have no real existences makes it almost impossible for the painters to make anything but hollow though perhaps brilliant façades. It would presumably lead to libel actions if, after this analysis, I gave examples of the portraits which I have in mind, but let me instead quote one example of how the com- bination of uniform and personality can be achieved so as to make a living whole, namely the portrait of Colonel Sir George Abercromby by A. K. Lawrence.
Almost equally characteristic of the Academy are the smart portraits of -women. For this there is a mannerism firmly established for years, which evidently still gives satisfaction. The formula consists in spiritualising the sitter by an elongation of the limbs, particularly of the arms and hands, and concen- trating as much attention as possible on the brilliance of the silk dress or jewels which the sitter is wearing. • The result
that the person portrayed seems to be saying : "I am a purely spiritual being, without any desires or coarse flesh, and my spirit is wrapped in the most lovely and costly dress." De Glehn is perhaps the best purveyor of this particular brand of satisfaction, and it cannot for a moment be denied that he does it with great brilliance (e.g., Nos. 125 and 200). Sometimes he uses devices which are not purely pictorial to reinforce his effect, as in Poetry (274), where the pose of idling over a book of minor lyrics is beautifully suggested. Other painters use other devices to stimulate interest. One is that of affected archaism, as in Meredith Frampton's Game of Patience (170), Or) with a different intention perhaps, in Reginald Lewis' Portrait of Bishop Vesey (38o), in which the appeal to a late mediaeval Christian convention, in the manner of Mabuse, is at least appropriate.
A few portraits emerge into reality, particularly those of women who seem to have got past the affectation of wanting to be reduced to air and are prepared to be painted as flesh and blood. Eves' painting of Mrs. Barclay (114) has this quality, and something of the same kind is to be found hi the portraits of a few intellectuals (perhaps for the same reasons), notably
in the same artist's portrait of Max Beerbohm (4o9). The same applies to a ,kw self-portraits, and to some portraits of one artist by another—as for instance Harry Morley's of James Woodford (232), and Neville Lewis' of Charles Cundall (559).
There is the usual crop of " poetical " pictures, painted in the usual variety of mannerisms. Connard goes further than most in the line of pure fluff in his Aphrodite Anadyomene (56). It is hard to see how a theme like this can have any real signi- ficance at the present time. Even when Botticelli painted it for the Medici it was an escape, but at any rate an escape into a world with which the artist's contemporaries were intimately acquainted, so deeply was the tradition of ancient mythology ingrained in the manner of thought of the early Renaissance. But today, when the classics are for most people a remote and academic study, a painting like this can only be the satisfaction of the very vaguest kind of dream, in which the symbols cannot really convince. But the most interesting technique in which these dreams are sometimes dressed is that used by Robert Barnes in his Cupid and Psyche (372). This is an example of what has sometimes happened in the portraits, namely, that the academic painters borrow from the more advanced forms of painting an idiom which they adapt to their own ends, and in the process remove all its vitality and value. In this case a particular type of " modernistic " distortion is used to give piquancy to an otherwise not very interesting treatment; but what was invented to express the complicated feelings of a serious artist has here been adapted to a smartness which is amusing in a poster but less in keeping in a considered painting. This is, however, no new phenomenon ; for whenever serious artists are forced to invent some new indirect method of expression, sooner or later the fashionable painter will come along, pick out what he wants and twist it to his purpose. The Academy can almost always make more of landscape than of the other genres, and this is as true this year as in any other. There are, of course, those glowing sunsets with teams of noble horses pulling loads of logs (551), but there are also more serious things in this line. It is a relief to come upon even an honest piece of Impressionism, such as Reginald Brundrit's Kettleness (68), and it is a real pleasure to meet Dunlop here, where his work stands out by its decision in the face of all this hesitation. There is a little group of painters who can be classed vaguely with him, if only for honesty of intention—Christopher Perkins (665), who is much more careful and less free in his handling, Christian Fergusson (275) and William Gaunt (576).
A few painters have apparently tried to treat more relevant subjects than the ordinary run of Academicians, but many of them have failed in the way in which they have treated them. The group of paintings of everyday scenes is quite considerable, but many of them are spoilt as realistic works by the fact that the artists seem to have reduced them to academics. Perhaps the saddest example is Mormington's Lake (282) than which nothing could be more skilfully composed. The subject seems to be quite commonplace and demands a straightforward treatment, but the painter has changed the whole character of the scene by the introduction of a nude in the centre of the composition. There is the best authority for this practice, but it means that the painting ceases to be a work of realism and passes out into the realm of those beautiful but remote escape creations. William Ranken's Spraying the Vines (562) comes nearer to being real, but even there the posed half nude in the foreground brings the whole painting into the studio instead of leaving it in the vineyard.
Finally, we come to the few artists who have attempted serious themes and have treated them seriously. Apart from the portraits already mentioned, the list is short. Complete honesty can be traced in a painting like Mildred Eldridge's Against the Frost (253), though it is rather slight ; Eleanor Best's Louise (481) is a personal version of the French so-called Intimist style, and James Cowie's Two Schoolgirls (366), though a little dry, shows again the right intention. Only one painting in the whole Academy, however, can claim to be really success- ful and serious, namely, Margaret Fitton's Ironing and Airing (689), in which the artist has attained to complete expression in an entirely suitable style of an idea keenly felt. Nothing has even been sacrificed here to the needs of seriousness, for the subtlety of colour and the loveliness of texture are at least as prominent here as in many more flashy works. It is from artists such as this that a new realism in England can spring.
Amrtioxv BLUNT.
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